The Murder of Claire Holman | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

[TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: March 21, 1994. Borrego Springs, San Diego County. A local woman in this quiet desert town
discovers her elderly neighbor savagely murdered in her own home. It could have been somebody who she trusted,
somebody she employed, a neighbor. Everybody was blaming people, different people in town.
NANCY GRACE: The murder investigation goes cold for nearly 30 years, until DNA advancements
crack the cold case wide open. These cold cases, they're extraordinarily difficult.
They go cold for a reason. BRIAN PATTERSON: I've been around since DNA started in this profession.
I mean, it's literally getting better as we sit here and speak. NANCY GRACE: This is the story of a 28-year-old murder,
and the decision to use groundbreaking forensic science to try and solve it. I'm Nancy Grace.
This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] [GENTLE MUSIC] Borrego Springs, San Diego County, California.
It's a small desert town two hours from San Diego. It's actually located in a state park.
JEFFREY VANDERSIP: Borrego Springs is patrolled by our rural division. There are a few crimes out there,
burglaries, thefts, those kinds of things, but violent crime is very rare. NANCY GRACE: In 1994, a local resident, Claire Holman,
lives by herself in Borrego Springs. She's known by neighbors as Kay, and she's very well-liked by all the people in the small community.
Claire was 72 years old. She was a retired hairdresser. She had managed a shop in Borrego Springs.
She lived on her own. Her husband Homer had died in 1980, so she'd been widowed for quite a while.
She actually taught at the beauty school in Anchorage for some time. And she would go to California for shows,
and she met a person there who eventually hired her to manage a beauty shop that he
was opening in Borrego Springs. I get this impression from her-- especially someone who's drawn to that lifestyle
in the desert-- that she was a bit of a free spirit, but she liked people. You don't go into hairdressing if you don't like people.
And especially in a small town like that, she was well-situated to hear everything
that was going on in the town. BRIAN PATTERSON: A lot of people knew her. She was known to have money.
She would lend money to the locals if they needed it, but did expect to get it paid back.
She didn't have any family also living out there. But she had hired housekeepers and the like who helped her out.
RAE ELLEN HOLMAN: This couple, the husband was a gardener and the wife, she would check her mail
and she would bring her packages or whatever. It's a very small and close-knit community,
and Claire Holman has many friends who help out their elderly neighbor. 9:00 PM, March 21, 1994.
One of those neighbors, Maria, makes a routine visit to Claire Holman's home, and what Maria finds
there is horrific. She lived alone in a small house with a fence around it. Generally, she would keep the gate closed.
When her friend came over to check on her, the gate was open. She went in the back.
The front door was locked, and went in the back, and found her deceased in her bedroom.
JOAN RENNER: There was a ligature around her neck, so she'd been strangled. It was just-- it was horrifying.
The bedroom she was in was ransacked. The rest of the house was pretty well put-together
and everything was in order, but the bedroom she was actually in, yes, it was ransacked.
It looked like jewelry was stolen. There was talk that she owned a handgun and it wasn't found,
and drawers were turned open. NANCY GRACE: Investigators arrive at the scene and begin asking the community if they've
seen anything suspicious. RAE ELLEN HOLMAN: They told us, I guess, when we got there, that the kids had seen a white pickup truck,
and it was around noontime. You know, it had happened in the middle of the day. And my first inclination was she probably owed them money,
and she didn't have it, so they were looking for it and possibly got in an argument and strangled her.
I didn't at all feel that it was premeditated. NANCY GRACE: Word spreads quickly
through this small community, and residents are afraid there's a killer amongst them.
BRIAN PATTERSON: It just made everybody nervous. When you read the old reports, some people literally moved away
and they started locking their doors, because there's an elderly kind of defenseless lady
that wasn't in the best of health that gets strangled and stabbed and murdered in her own house.
I think they were devastated, devastated at the loss. A lot of people would have felt that they
lost a friend, a confidante. You know this place, you know these people, and something this awful could happen.
NANCY GRACE: Police question Claire Holman's gardener. He's quickly cleared. Some in the community, however, still suspect him.
RAE ELLEN HOLMAN: I hadn't met him but I had heard all about him, and my husband had met him
several times because he-- over the years, he had visited his mother. And we were just dumbfounded that--
that they would even think that. They left town. They moved to another town because people were obviously
being very unpleasant about it. Sometimes there was a focus on people just because where they're from or what they look like.
Maybe your biases lead you there. You do that and you don't necessarily look for the other clues that may lead you
in a very different direction. And of course, with this case, you know, it led us to a very different person
than the people that were initially evaluated. The San Diego sheriff's department
launches an investigation. A killer is on the loose. Will he strike again? We find out next on "Bloodline Detectives."
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] [DRAMATIC MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 1994, Borrego Springs, California.
A local woman makes a horrible discovery. She finds her neighbor, 72-year-old Claire Holman,
brutally murdered in her own bedroom. Police quickly arrive to clear Holman's home.
So they're going to process the whole crime scene for any kind of physical evidence, fingerprints, blood.
BRIAN PATTERSON: She would use rubber gloves a lot when she worked around the house, latex gloves,
so there was a fingertip of a latex glove ripped off in the doorway. They collected that.
They collected hairs, rape kit. They documented foot impressions, tire impressions.
Collected somewhere around a hundred items of evidence. The real physical evidence that they found was really some
hairs that were not Claire's. And they, of course, they tag and bag those to keep
them aside, just in case. NANCY GRACE: Unfortunately, scientists cannot test the hair
for nucleotide DNA because the hairs have been separated from the root. Investigators hope autopsy will reveal more clues
about Claire Holman's killer. Near the end, when we're done, the medical examiner comes,
and that's when we process the body at the scene. They collect the body, bring it back to the medical examiner's
office. We'll collect more evidence there, fingernail scrapings, hair samples, swabs of the genital areas, then the autopsy
will then find the physical reasons for the murder. They found the manner of death to be homicide.
What they discovered is that she had been strangled to death, been beaten some, and she'd
also been sexually assaulted. NANCY GRACE: Investigators must now notify Claire Holman's family of her murder.
The first person on the list-- Claire's son, Ralph, who lives out of state. Kay's niece's husband called my husband in Alaska at about 7
o'clock in the morning to say he had received a call from the detective in San Diego, and Kay had been murdered
and he should call the detective. Here's his number. [SOMBER MUSIC] He called the detective, and he explained that she had been
murdered the day before, so we went down and we spent the night at a motel. And then the next day, we went over to the house
and met the detectives. I don't know if he told us right then, but she had been strangled.
NANCY GRACE: Claire Holman's son and her daughter-in-law now have the painful task of cleaning up Claire's home.
RAE ELLEN HOLMAN: About two weeks later, my husband and I went first and got rid of all the furniture,
had the house cleaned. Another week went by, and then my son and I went down and finished everything up.
It wasn't as difficult for us as it would have been for my husband. [TENSE MUSIC]
NANCY GRACE: Detectives begin the search for a killer by interviewing those who knew Claire Holman.
JOAN RENNER: Like they start any investigation in a homicide, you just start with the person who found the body.
What is your connection to the victim? Who do you know? Who do you know that she knows?
Do you know of any problems that she had with anyone? And they just start to work their way out.
It just goes in a circle. BRIAN PATTERSON: They start interviewing, obviously, Maria, who found her.
Uh, she had a gardener. She had a plumber that would work on her house routinely.
Uh, other-- the gardener had his brothers, would occasionally work there, also. And they would have talked to people she knew wherever she
shopped for groceries, um, people maybe who had been her clients at the hair salon.
Anybody, anybody she knew. Any time she interacted with someone at all, anywhere in town
or out that they knew about, they would question that person or those people to see what they could find out.
They have to know the victim in some ways before they can find the killer. So they just start to build it out.
See if anything, if anyone clicks, if anyone seems a little off. And they were just having no luck at all.
NANCY GRACE: San Diego sheriffs are relentless in pursuing the investigation, but all leads go cold.
JEFFREY VANDERSIP: None of those persons of interest really panned out. And like so many cases where there's an extraordinary amount
of attention at the beginning, as time goes on, and as the leads dry up, it's hard to revive
these cases to the point where we can solve them. They had those hairs. That's something they did have, but there
really wasn't anything else. There was no one who had seen her with anyone, or no suspicious activity.
There just was nothing, and the case goes cold. The case, basically it's archived because they've
interviewed everybody they can. They've eliminated all their people of interest.
When people think cold case, maybe they think that the detectives have set it aside.
They've only really set it aside to work on current cases. They never forget it.
They're always listening. They're always hoping for a lead. They're always hoping someone will talk.
Maybe someone will confess. People sometimes come forward. There's always that hope.
So with a cold case, they never forget it. NANCY GRACE: Fast forward, 2003. The case file for Claire Holman's murder is reopened.
It's routine practice for San Diego sheriffs to review cold cases. Could it be a new beginning to catching her killer?
TIM CHANTLER: I think with Claire Holman, like a lot of our cold cases, every few years someone
will reopen the case, read through it, go back and re-interview some neighbors, family,
friends, people that knew her. So even when we don't have new evidence we review the cases anyway, because there may
be new interviews we could do. And maybe with those new interviews, people who were reluctant to talk 30 years ago
might be willing to say something important now. NANCY GRACE: As DNA technology continues
to advance at an amazing rate, a new focus is given to cases that have gone cold.
TIM CHANTLER: DNA in the early 2000s, for us, really became more prominent. We started doing a lot of DNA testing
of older cases at that time. At the time in 1994, DNA was really not anywhere close to what it is today.
Even if they hadn't had that knowledge, good detectives have always been very diligent about keeping
evidence, anything that might come and point to a killer later on. You just don't know.
But with DNA, then there's a real opportunity to find out. NANCY GRACE: Police once again analyze evidence from the crime
scene back in 1994. This time, they discover a male DNA sample located inside a rubber glove.
This sample is uploaded into the CODIS national databank to see if there's a match.
BRIAN PATTERSON: CODIS is a database that they put offenders' DNA in, and then when you get DNA from a crime scene,
you'll put that DNA in and it'll cross-reference those DNAs and see if there's somebody in the system that's been arrested
before and can be identified. They did get a small profile, and then later on they tested it
again and got a better profile, and they ultimately were able to put that profile into CODIS.
However, they never got any hits. TIM CHANTLER: It's frustrating, but it's also not that uncommon.
We have several cases that have been in CODIS for years and we've never gotten a hit.
They did collect DNA from all their suspected people, or people of interest, and were able to eliminate them
over the years. So it went cold, but it had been evaluated and reevaluated several times
over the intervening years. But in the end, they weren't able to develop any new leads that could point us in the direction of who
did this. NANCY GRACE: San Diego sheriffs have their own high-tech in-house crime lab,
and it allows the department to routinely utilize innovative methods to test evidence from cold cases.
TIM CHANTLER: Crime lab has grown, and it's been financed by the county and the sheriff's department.
It works for us. They supply us with all the resources we need to do, and it's nice to keep it in-house.
So we have a pretty advanced lab. There's a lot of stuff we can do that maybe smaller departments can't.
But even then, there's some testing that is so new and cutting-edge that we have
to send out to outside labs. NANCY GRACE: 2018. Investigators learn of a DNA tool that's revolutionizing
the outcome of cold cases. What is it? Investigative genetic genealogy. Genetic genealogy is the use of DNA
and other records to try and identify people. Then investigative genetic genealogy, of course,
is that-- when you're then using it in a forensic case. Basically, using genealogy to help
identify a suspect, an unknown suspect, or an unidentified Jane or John Doe. JOAN RENNER: Genealogy, a lot of it
is, again, like any detective on any side, just relentless pursuit of-- of an answer.
The case that really brought this science to the forefront was the Golden State Killer case, another California case,
known also as the Original Night Stalker. BARBARA RAE-VENTER: 100-plus burglaries,
50 rapes, 13 murders. This guy is a bad dude. It was April 24 when he was actually arrested,
and we had identified him about a week previously. Just worldwide, everybody went absolutely crazy,
because it was-- it was just such an important case to have solved. That was the case that sort of put IGG on the radar
for everybody else, and we were like, what is this? We had had a conversation where we kind of said,
we're not solving these cold cases. They're extraordinarily difficult. They go cold for a reason.
So when we heard about the techniques that they used, we're like, let's go there.
Let's see what we can do. TIM CHANTLER: And so we had detectives back at that time in our administration
who really took this as a new investigative tool and dove in completely, and started
to learn how to build family trees and just went all-in on this new process. JEFFREY VANDERSIP: We figured this was just another tool
that we needed to learn in order to get the answers that we were looking for. It's a really, really dramatic leap forward,
I think, for science and for solving cold cases. NANCY GRACE: San Diego sheriffs ask Barbara Rae-Venter
to help them tackle the science of investigative genetic genealogy. She's a noted genealogy expert.
One year earlier, she is instrumental in helping track down the Golden State Killer.
Will the investigators now catch the man who murdered Claire Holman back in 1994?
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [DRAMATIC MUSIC] [DRAMATIC MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 2018, Borrego Springs, California.
The San Diego sheriffs want to use new forensic science to try and solve a number of cold cases, including the 1994 murder
of 72-year-old Claire Holman. We couldn't be doing any of this unless we had the support of the administration to do it,
because they could easily say it's not a good investment of time, investment of money,
investment of personnel. But the captain at the time said, well, try one case. So we went through all the cold cases,
and in order for this whole process to work, you have to have enough DNA. So the ones with no DNA, we put aside.
NANCY GRACE: The sheriff's department now prioritizes those cold cases that could be solved
by investigative genetic genealogy. JEFFREY VANDERSIP: The big unknown for us was the genealogy, and that's
the learning curve for us. It took us 16 months to solve our first case and then it just kind of went from there.
NANCY GRACE: After solving five cold cases using investigative genetic genealogy,
San Diego detectives focus on the Claire Holman murder. JEFFREY VANDERSIP: Claire Holman's case was just
one of many that we evaluated and thought that we could use for this. So as we went on with the cases, her case
eventually bubbled up to the top, and she became the next one. And this was a case that had DNA in CODIS, a profile.
So it was a good candidate to try to use genealogy. [AMBIENT MUSIC] The problem was extract from the glove
was all used up at the time. And there wasn't any other DNA. The analysis that's done so that we
can do genealogy, a different process of evaluating. BARBARA RAE-VENTER: The law enforcement database, which is
the CODIS database, it's STRs. It's not SNPs. And the databases that are the consumer
databases, those are all SNP profiles, so they're totally different DNA. The problem is the CODIS database has to be an exact hit.
So all you know when you run the autosomal STRs against the CODIS database is that your person does not
match with the crime scene DNA, because the crime scene DNA is in CODIS. With the STRs, you're not learning
anything about the person. With the SNP profile, you can tell from the amount of matching DNA how closely they are then
related to the crime scene DNA. If your trees are right, then you're probably pretty close.
You could be looking at a sibling or maybe a cousin, so it gives you a lot more information than the STRs do.
NANCY GRACE: Now detectives face another challenge. Is there enough DNA recovered from the crime scene
to run this more advanced method of DNA testing? BRIAN PATTERSON: There was a hair recovered from her back.
JEFFREY VANDERSIP: And it was unrooted hair. Rooted hair is much easier because you
have the root from the scalp. But unrooted hair, up until a couple of years ago,
was difficult if not impossible. BARBARA RAE-VENTER: But that DNA is really good DNA because it's protected within the hair shaft.
When we started out, you had to use about 20 to 200 nanograms of DNA. Now you can do it with picograms of DNA.
So a nanogram is 10 to the minus ninth gram, so you got nine zeros in front of it.
And then a picogram is 12. It's probably about six cells' worth. We're not sure if the technology
is there to extract the DNA we want from this piece of evidence. And some companies say they think we can do it,
but we're going to use all of that sample. So then we have to make a decision-- if we want to do it now and risk it, or save it for later.
BARBARA RAE-VENTER: Is it worth it to take the risk, particularly when you're down to the--
the dregs of what you have, and you know you're going to be consuming it? Do you want to consume it or do you want to wait
for the next best thing? Technology is progressing so fast that at this point we have to weigh the factors.
In some of these cases, if we don't have a lot of DNA or if it's degraded, do we wait?
Because in six months, things might be better. If we have a case that's 20, 30, 40 years old,
maybe the last chance to catch a suspect who's still alive. And so sometimes we may take that risk.
In 2022, it's time for San Diego sheriffs to roll the dice. They decide to test that last piece of DNA evidence
from Claire Holman's murder scene. The answer to a 28-year-old cold case is at stake.
That hair was submitted to get a SNP profile to work genealogy, and we got a profile and we were able to work
the case from there. [TENSE MUSIC] JEFFREY VANDERSIP: These cases often turn on the foresight of the original detectives
and the original criminalists to gather DNA and preserve it in a very careful way.
If we don't have that, 40 years later, we don't have DNA to use for our next moves
in these kinds of investigations. NANCY GRACE: The SNP profile is uploaded and cross-referenced against commercial DNA
databases for a possible match. BARBARA RAE-VENTER: So the unit of measurement that is used
is the centimorgan. It's-- it has to do with the probability of recombination. So if you've got a very short segment of DNA,
the likelihood of recombination is very low, so that's then a low centimorgan. Um, if you've got a long stretch of DNA,
the possibility of it actually then connecting to another strand from-- from the related chromosome
is fairly high, and then you get a high centimorgan value. And so the more centimorgans of matching DNA you
have, then the closer, generally speaking, you're related. So this case went fairly quickly
because we had a very good centimorgan hit, and our analyst Jeff starts researching
people related to this person. So in this particular case, it was kind of unusual.
The suspect's unknown and there was a 685-centimorgan relationship. It was this really high match, and then
a lot of distant relatives. We didn't have other matches to help guide us. We just had this one high match.
We just started working the trees, and once we learned the identity of the person who
was this high match, we started with her. She was our ground zero. We needed to build her tree because we
knew that somewhere in her family system lived the suspect. [GENTLE MUSIC] When they started to build the family tree out,
I think they had 118 people. They start to bring it in and hone in on it. And usually what will happen in cases
like this is that they'll narrow it to just a few family members, because they look at people related
by marriage, related by blood. JEFFREY VANDERSIP: It was a little hard because the match
was also born out of wedlock, so you can't assume that what we think is her father really
is her father. And we're interested in blood relationships, not family relationships.
So it took us a little time to get past that, but once we were, then it really kind of resolved itself.
JOAN RENNER: When I look at some of the charts I've seen for this genealogy stuff, it's amazing to me
that anyone has the patience to go through so many people and so many steps. But they do it because they feel passionately about--
I think about getting justice for people, and it's just an amazing thing to put these things together.
I just can't imagine the people that do-- actually do that research. It's just amazing.
It took us a little bit of time because with just one, you don't know which side of the family
you're going to find this person. So you have to work the maternal line, you have to work the paternal line.
That's why you have to know the case intimately, because geography and age and time
frame all play into your evaluation of these matches. NANCY GRACE: Detectives finally have a solid match,
and they begin to build a family tree in search of a killer. If you think that the suspect was most likely a certain age,
and you know this crime happened 30 years ago, well, then when you actually are looking at these real people,
and their ages, it helps you sort of place them. BRIAN PATTERSON: So you get a relative
and we start researching that person, seeing if they have any connection to Borrego Springs.
We get a connection to Borrego Springs on a relative and then we start investigating that way.
NANCY GRACE: Now investigators are able to identify two potential suspects, a grandfather
and his son, who both lived in Borrego Springs at the time of the murder. We weren't sure if the son was our suspect, or the grandfather.
We had to surreptitiously go about collecting samples from those people. We will sometimes pick up people's trash
and try and get a sample off a discarded soda bottle, cigarette butts. Or other times, we will have undercover officers and deputies
follow that person around and collect a sample as they maybe go to a restaurant or walk down the street,
and then test that against the sample we had to see if that was going to be a parent or a direct match.
So when we're trying to get samples from the son and the grandson, we got the son's first,
and we matched that to our sample that we had for our suspect. The genetic match was father to son,
so we knew that the grandfather was our suspect. Now they have a guy. [TENSE MUSIC]
JEFFREY VANDERSIP: Jerry Robison ended up being our suspect. NANCY GRACE: A grandfather is now
the prime suspect in the brutal murder of 72-year-old Claire Holman. His name, Jerry Robison.
Now police have to find him. That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [DRAMATIC MUSIC]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 2022, Borrego Springs, California. San Diego sheriffs utilizing investigative genetic genealogy
to track down the brutal killer of a 72-year-old woman, Claire Holman, all the way back in 1994.
The forensic technique allows them to narrow their suspect list down to one man named Jerry Robison.
And we're able to then, you know, definitively state that the owner of the DNA in this hair
found at the crime scene, and matching other elements, was indeed Jerry Robison.
A eureka moment. It's-- it's such a roller coaster on these investigations, sometimes.
Constant up and down on where-- until you finally do identify the person. NANCY GRACE: Since there was no sign of forced entry at the 1994
crime scene, detectives look into the background of Jerry Robison. Did he know Claire Holman?
BRIAN PATTERSON: He lived in Borrego Springs. He was a plumber by trade. And she was having plumbing issues on a regular basis
at her house, so one of the plumbers there would come and fix her house. So we believe that he might have been there before and actually
done work on her house. And that's how he knew of her. He knew where she lived. He knew maybe a little bit about her routine.
He wasn't next door, but he lived very close. I believe that there were some sections of her property
where you can see the house that he was living in at the time that this crime was committed.
He was on the original suspect list. [OMINOUS MUSIC] It's a tiny town. And again, they were looking at anyone she interacted with.
So the fact that there wasn't a break-in, given what we now know about him, wasn't a surprise at all.
We started digging into his life intensively. JEFFREY VANDERSIP: He, um, had a drinking problem.
He was kind of a quiet guy. He did have a violent history. When he was married to his son's mother, he was very violent.
And then they separated and she took the kids, and then he lived in Borrego Springs.
When he was younger, in his 20s, he lived in Ventura County. And he was arrested there for an attempted burglary.
JEFFREY VANDERSIP: He did have a criminal history but it was fairly minor. Um, you have to remember that if it had been fairly major,
we probably would have had his DNA on file and would have been able to match it to the DNA
from the crime scene. Once we focused on his life, and we focused on his life from the beginning, we realized that he had a violent history
within his family and that even though it hadn't perhaps gotten to the level where law enforcement were aware of that,
that didn't make it any less real for the people who were impacted by that. So learning that definitely helped in putting together
a proper profile of Jerry. JOAN RENNER: He's a hard person to-- to find in records, so it's hard to say what--
where this came from, where this-- where this murder came from. Because we're trying to develop probable cause.
It's up to the courts to decide that they're ultimately responsible or not, but do we have probable cause
to make an arrest? And we had enough evidence, we thought. And then we look, well, where is he?
[AMBIENT MUSIC] This case was resolved in 2022. He had died 15 years before. JOAN RENNER: In the time in between, in 2007,
he died of cancer. So once we determined it was him, obviously, we can't prosecute a deceased person.
So we still do our due diligence and collect as much evidence and build the case to a point where we're comfortable that we
have identified the suspect. A lot of the individuals that we've identified have,
you know, sort of died themselves in-- in violent ways. But this individual actually lived, you know,
a number of years after Claire was killed. And as I remember, I think died in the community
in which this crime occurred. NANCY GRACE: San Diego sheriffs identify a killer.
His death, however, still leaves so many questions about Claire Holman's murder.
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [DRAMATIC MUSIC] [DRAMATIC MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 2022.
The San Diego sheriffs now identify the killer of 72-year-old Claire Holman in 1994.
His name, Jerry Robison. Detectives must now tell Claire's family they finally know who took her life.
BRIAN PATTERSON: It's very rewarding to be able to sit down and tell them, hey, we've been working on this case.
Uh, we believe this person is the person that killed your loved one, and give them as much detail
as we can. Obviously, we can't talk to the person if they're deceased and find out what happened, but we can--
we get a pretty good timeline. And through interviews of friends, family, neighbors,
I'll interview whoever I can to try to get a history on this person and understand
what happened that day. Brian Patterson called and told me who it was, and that he was a plumber, and probably he
had done work for her. And he also said that he had died, but that his son told the detective that he
wasn't a very nice person. My husband died in 2020. There's a part of you that, especially
him, that would always wonder. Yeah, he-- he would have liked to have known. [CHUCKLES] But.
[SOMBER MUSIC] To her extended family, I'm certainly sorry for their loss. And I'm pleased that we were able to close this case,
that it's not a big question mark hanging over the heads of the community, the heads of the family members,
and over the heads of the men and women who work in the homicide unit. NANCY GRACE: The cold case team, very disappointed.
Jerry Robison will never face justice for his crime. Nevertheless, they reflect on the incredible advancements
in forensic technology, advancements that allow them to finally close Claire's case.
BRIAN PATTERSON: I've been around since DNA started in this profession, and then it's
progressed to the point where, I mean, it's literally getting better as we sit here and speak.
Now if we get really good matches, we can solve a case in, oh, 24 hours. JEFFREY VANDERSIP: The DNA doesn't lie.
If we didn't have the DNA, barring some smoking gun that probably didn't exist, this case probably would never
have been solved and we would have spent our careers not knowing who did this. Her family would have spent the entirety of their lives
not knowing who was responsible for that. IGG was the last resort, in a way. And I'm hoping, and we see this more and more, that IGG isn't
just used for the cold cases. We don't have to wait 30 years to say, well, let's use IGG now.
It's going to be more difficult. I mean, you basically have to wear a hazmat suit,
if you're going to commit a crime and not leave any DNA behind, because you're shedding hair all the time, you're shedding
skin cells all the time. Um, and so as the techniques become more and more sensitive,
yeah, it's going to become more and more difficult to actually be a criminal committing
these kinds of crimes. [SOMBER MUSIC] JOAN RENNER: I think what I'd tell a perpetrator who hasn't
been caught yet and thinks they haven't left any DNA behind, first of all, you're wrong.
You did. And secondly, I think, um, never sleep well. You'll never sleep well a night in your life,
because you only had one opportunity to commit this crime. Detectives have, literally now, decades in which to solve it.
So you'll never sleep well, and I think that's fine. NANCY GRACE: The murder of anyone, no matter their age,
is always tragic. 72-year-old Claire Holman was so loved by her family and her neighbors.
Out of this tragedy, however, some good did come. Claire's case proves the power of groundbreaking
forensic science. It's a science in which a killer's own family tree brings him to justice, a science that can solve
even the most difficult criminal cases in days instead of years. I'm Nancy Grace.
Thank you for joining us here on "Bloodline Detectives." [DRAMATIC MUSIC] [DRAMATIC MUSIC]
[THEME MUSIC]

When Claire Holman is murdered in 1994, her case quickly goes cold, and many assume it will stay that way. But twenty years later, new technology finally provides answers.

Now in its fifth season, Bloodline Detectives is the leading true crime series that explores how police departments harness genetic genealogy to solve crimes that were once considered "unsolvable," bringing long-awaited answers to victims' families.

Brief Summary

A cold case from 1994 is solved using advanced DNA technology, identifying Jerry Robison as Claire Holman's killer.

Key points

The Discovery of a Murder. A neighbor finds 72-year-old Claire Holman brutally murdered in her bedroom.
Community in Fear. The murder of Claire Holman sends shockwaves through the small town, leaving residents terrified.
Cold Case Reopened. In 2003, the investigation into Claire Holman's murder is reopened due to advancements in DNA technology.
Hope for Justice. Investigators remain hopeful that new techniques will lead to solving cold cases, including Holman's.
A New Forensic Tool. In 2018, investigators learn about investigative genetic genealogy, a revolutionary method for solving cold cases.
A 28-Year-Old Cold Case. San Diego sheriffs decide to test the last piece of DNA evidence from Claire Holman's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It just made everybody nervous.

Brian Patterson reflects on the community's fear after the murder.

5:37WatchMay 12, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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